With many recent advances in paging systems, it is found that more and more sophisticated and versatile paging services are in demand. For example, some paging systems already provide pagers with circuit features that allow the user, or otherwise known as subscriber, to cause an incoming paging signal to be stored for read-out later at his convenience. This is especially found desirable where the paging signal is in the form of audible tones. This type of paging system and pager is used where the subscriber does not wish to let the pager generate an audible sound which may disturb him or others who are with him as the pager receives the incoming calls. The subscriber would rather have the pager store the incoming calls and provide audible tones later at his convenience. Occasions that require the foregoing type of paging are numerous, for example, doctors in an operating room or business and professional people in conferences, etc. Although the above illustrates the application of storing incoming paging calls which later will be read out in the form of audible tones, the alerting signal need not be limited to an audible signal, but could be visual or tactile as well.
For a specific and illustrative example of pagers that store the incoming paging calls for subsequent readout upon interrogation, one may refer to the U.S. Pat. No. 3,742,481, granted to Douglas W. Nickerson on June 26, 1973, and assigned to the present assignee.
With time, demand for more and different features or options are placed on paging systems and pagers. One demand now placed on pagers is that they not only provide the feature where calls can be stored for later read-out capability but also a priority feature which can bypass the call-store routine and instead immediately alert the subscriber. This need is best illustrated by way of an example. A physician subscriber, or doctor, may wish to have routine non-emergency calls from his office or hospital stored for later read-out, at his option. But there are certain types of emergency calls that he must receive immediately without any delay. Such a call should bypass or override the store-and-subsequent-readout-routine option.